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King Solomon's Carpet
From an Edgar Award-winning Murder intrudes on a student's secret history of the London Underground in this "b rilliantly unexpected" mystery ( The Times , London).Jarvis Stringer is a young man of many peculiarities, but no obsession has taken hold quite like that of writing the strange and twisting history of the London Underground. To finance his project, he rents out cheap rooms in the long-disused West Hampstead schoolhouse he inherited--a crumbling monument to morbid local lore.The boarders, each eking out their invisible lives above--and beneath--the city's surface, are a collection of strays, waifs, subway buskers, and loners, who are raising the concern of Jarvis's relatives and more proper neighbors. But even Jarvis has become suspicious. One of his outcasts may be a killer who's plotting something unforgettable and catastrophic--and Jarvis himself has unwittingly become a conspirator."A jolting novel of psychological suspense," King Solomon's Carpet was the recipient of the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award ( The New York Times Book Review ).
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First published January 1, 1991
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About the author
Barbara Vine
29 books463 followersPseudonym of Ruth Rendell.
Rendell created a third strand of writing with the publication of A Dark Adapted Eye under her pseudonym Barbara Vine in 1986. Books such as King Solomon's Carpet, A Fatal Inversion and Anna's Book (original UK title Asta's Book) inhabit the same territory as her psychological crime novels while they further develop themes of family misunderstandings and the side effects of secrets kept and crimes done. Rendell is famous for her elegant prose and sharp insights into the human mind, as well as her ability to create cogent plots and characters. Rendell has also injected the social changes of the last 40 years into her work, bringing awareness to such issues as domestic violence and the change in the status of women.
Rendell created a third strand of writing with the publication of A Dark Adapted Eye under her pseudonym Barbara Vine in 1986. Books such as King Solomon's Carpet, A Fatal Inversion and Anna's Book (original UK title Asta's Book) inhabit the same territory as her psychological crime novels while they further develop themes of family misunderstandings and the side effects of secrets kept and crimes done. Rendell is famous for her elegant prose and sharp insights into the human mind, as well as her ability to create cogent plots and characters. Rendell has also injected the social changes of the last 40 years into her work, bringing awareness to such issues as domestic violence and the change in the status of women.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 144 reviews
October 21, 2022
It surprises me that so many react negatively to this book. Barbara Vine is the name Ruth Rendell wrote under when getting away from her more well known detective novels. Detective and genre fiction has always had a hard time getting respect as genuine literature.
This book is advertised as a thriller, but if so it’s more due to suspense and not action. Maybe that’s what puts people off. I think it does have a modern plot, examines lives in the city (London) and has something to say about alienation, crime and people trying to get by.
An assorted group of people with unanchored lives stay in an old schoolhouse. The man that inherited the building rents at ludicrously low rates which is great for people without means for anything better. Assorted people at loose ends, drifting through their lives share space while the owner, who is fascinated by metro systems travels to research his next book. The schoolhouse shelters weak, confused runaway wives, buskers without long term plans, careless moms with kids etc. and eventually a rather sinister, manipulative character who is described as looking a little satanic or Dracula like. Ironically only one street-wise kid recognizes him for what he is.
The schoolhouse owner’s book on the tube appears throughout. It’s a fun diversion from the tension. He explains the history of the tube, statistics on crime, accidents, threats to public welfare and
ridership among many topics. This is all useful as the tube itself is a huge character here, King Solomon’s Carpet. The book was written in 1991 but doesn’t seem dated at all. Another book with some similarities is Paul Theroux’s The Family Arsenal. Both stories show misfit Londoners collected in a home unaware of the complete situation and their manipulative leader or dominant personality. Both involve terrorists. Vine’s treatment is better.
This book is advertised as a thriller, but if so it’s more due to suspense and not action. Maybe that’s what puts people off. I think it does have a modern plot, examines lives in the city (London) and has something to say about alienation, crime and people trying to get by.
An assorted group of people with unanchored lives stay in an old schoolhouse. The man that inherited the building rents at ludicrously low rates which is great for people without means for anything better. Assorted people at loose ends, drifting through their lives share space while the owner, who is fascinated by metro systems travels to research his next book. The schoolhouse shelters weak, confused runaway wives, buskers without long term plans, careless moms with kids etc. and eventually a rather sinister, manipulative character who is described as looking a little satanic or Dracula like. Ironically only one street-wise kid recognizes him for what he is.
The schoolhouse owner’s book on the tube appears throughout. It’s a fun diversion from the tension. He explains the history of the tube, statistics on crime, accidents, threats to public welfare and
ridership among many topics. This is all useful as the tube itself is a huge character here, King Solomon’s Carpet. The book was written in 1991 but doesn’t seem dated at all. Another book with some similarities is Paul Theroux’s The Family Arsenal. Both stories show misfit Londoners collected in a home unaware of the complete situation and their manipulative leader or dominant personality. Both involve terrorists. Vine’s treatment is better.
February 23, 2023
"While they waited on the platform Jarvis told them about King Solomon's carpet. This magic carpet of green silk was large enough for all the people to stand on it. When ready, Solomon told it where he wanted to go and it rose in the air and landed everyone at the station they wanted." This serves as an apt description of the London Underground aka the Tube.
Time slowed down as I read about the characters who are brought together by Jarvis to inhabit a disused school. He wanders the street and collecting people, some almost as eccentric as he, and then, acts as their landlord. Several of them scrape a living through playing music in the tunnels of the Underground. Others move in darker territory and commit criminal acts.
We learn about the layout and history of the London Underground from Jarvis who is fascinated by it and other rail systems around the world. He strives to earn enough money from the meager rents of his motley crew to take the the cheapest route to travel to see specific trains. So focused is he that he doesn't mind traveling to places at inopportune times of the year, such as Moscow in January.
When he returns from one trip he notes that "the graffiti on the cars had got worse while he was away. It was everywhere and multicolored. He even saw some inside a car, Solomon's carpet woven of dirty colored threads." Like a carpet the strands of these characters' lives are woven together to form an absorbing story and journey into into human nature.
Time slowed down as I read about the characters who are brought together by Jarvis to inhabit a disused school. He wanders the street and collecting people, some almost as eccentric as he, and then, acts as their landlord. Several of them scrape a living through playing music in the tunnels of the Underground. Others move in darker territory and commit criminal acts.
We learn about the layout and history of the London Underground from Jarvis who is fascinated by it and other rail systems around the world. He strives to earn enough money from the meager rents of his motley crew to take the the cheapest route to travel to see specific trains. So focused is he that he doesn't mind traveling to places at inopportune times of the year, such as Moscow in January.
When he returns from one trip he notes that "the graffiti on the cars had got worse while he was away. It was everywhere and multicolored. He even saw some inside a car, Solomon's carpet woven of dirty colored threads." Like a carpet the strands of these characters' lives are woven together to form an absorbing story and journey into into human nature.
January 7, 2021
Ruth Rendell (aka Barbara Vine) was a great writer and as such her novels possess an inherent readability. I for one am generally happy to keep soldiering on, even when the going gets stodgy. King Solomon’s Carpet, however, tested this principle to the limit.
I reckon I spent a good three-quarters of the book hoping that the disparate threads (the lives of several rather disreputable characters loosely connected via a seedy London lodging house) would ingeniously be woven together to produce a fantastic outcome. As time and pages began to run short, my doubts intensified.
I struggled to identify a key protagonist – eventually I settled upon Alice, a beautiful and talented violinist who had abandoned her husband and baby to find her musical vocation. But I’m not sure Alice was the intended hero, and she began to be eclipsed by her new boyfriend and cohabitant, London Underground busker Tom.
But then Tom was in turn overshadowed by the sinister Axel – clearly not the photographer he claimed to be; though it excused his possession of strange chemical compounds, against a background of anonymous bombings across the city. Alice falls for Axel.
At this point I thought I saw an opening for a horrifying plot twist, and the suspense that the narrative had uncharacteristically missed. This was a double-edged wish: I wanted the story to come to life, but I was rooting for Alice!
Anyway, I was wrong – no need to worry. The author took an alternative route, somewhat easier to bear. There ensued a spectacular outcome, but perhaps lacking in psychological drama.
And then the book closed, leaving me wondering if the other threads were mere fillers. They had little sway on the central intrigue, other than to add peripheral colour. The same can be said of pesky incursions from a treatise being written by one of the characters, landlord Jarvis: The Complete History of the London Underground zzz ...
So, in summary, a lot of padding, not much suspense, and a rather linear plot.
It just about hangs together thanks to the author’s captivating style.
I reckon I spent a good three-quarters of the book hoping that the disparate threads (the lives of several rather disreputable characters loosely connected via a seedy London lodging house) would ingeniously be woven together to produce a fantastic outcome. As time and pages began to run short, my doubts intensified.
I struggled to identify a key protagonist – eventually I settled upon Alice, a beautiful and talented violinist who had abandoned her husband and baby to find her musical vocation. But I’m not sure Alice was the intended hero, and she began to be eclipsed by her new boyfriend and cohabitant, London Underground busker Tom.
But then Tom was in turn overshadowed by the sinister Axel – clearly not the photographer he claimed to be; though it excused his possession of strange chemical compounds, against a background of anonymous bombings across the city. Alice falls for Axel.
At this point I thought I saw an opening for a horrifying plot twist, and the suspense that the narrative had uncharacteristically missed. This was a double-edged wish: I wanted the story to come to life, but I was rooting for Alice!
Anyway, I was wrong – no need to worry. The author took an alternative route, somewhat easier to bear. There ensued a spectacular outcome, but perhaps lacking in psychological drama.
And then the book closed, leaving me wondering if the other threads were mere fillers. They had little sway on the central intrigue, other than to add peripheral colour. The same can be said of pesky incursions from a treatise being written by one of the characters, landlord Jarvis: The Complete History of the London Underground zzz ...
So, in summary, a lot of padding, not much suspense, and a rather linear plot.
It just about hangs together thanks to the author’s captivating style.
January 13, 2013
I have read Ruth Rendell's novels, and those under her pen name Barbara Vine. Like The Bridesmaid, I found this novel quite bleak and gothic, and yet, also like The Bridesmaid, I couldn't stop reading it. The author takes us into the lives of broken families, disturbed and frightened runaways, and musicians who busk on the London Underground wondering if they've thrown away their last chance to be great. Along the way, the reader learns a lot about the London Underground and is treated to some of the most harrowing passages I've ever read, when some kids playing hooky come up with a VERY BAD WAY to pass the time. I don't think of myself as someone who always indulges in the darkest of dark stories, and yet what fascinated me was how each of these characters was a train wreck in a different way (pardon the expression), and you just had to find out how bad the wreck would get. Pretty bad. And yet there are also friendships and relationships which are lovely, if melancholy. Loved it.
March 15, 2017
I should have trusted my instinct (which was that I wouldn't like another Barbara Vine book) but I was fooled by the blurb saying it was a modern-day take on Conrad's Secret Agent which I enjoyed immensely. Now that I have finished, I can somewhat comprehend that description but while Conrad's story thrilled & fascinated me, this one mostly bored me. It is a "psychological thriller"; apparently that means it is about people's thoughts & emotions with very little action (and most of that occurring off-stage). The one person whose thoughts I would have been interested in was of course the one whose thoughts and motivations are not given. And that is one of my biggest complaints of all -- in the end, there is no resolution or explanation. I could have put up with all the character-driven stuff if the plot had had some point!
Disappointing...
Disappointing...
October 9, 2014
If you have ever been in any underground system then you know the mystery. Okay, maybe it lacks the history of London’s – for instance, my city’s underground system(s) has never been used as a bomb shelter - , but it has many similarities – “lost” stops, a schedule only a psychic can figure out, a what is that smell feel, an in comprehensible map.
You get the idea
King Solomon’s Carpet is book where the subway system plays an important part. In fact, it’s the central character. Don’t let the blurb on the back cover fool into thinking otherwise. The star of the show is neither Alice nor her lovers. It’s not Tina and the kids. It’s not Jarvis.
It’s the UNDERGROUND!
It’s the threatening nature of the Underground, any underground really, that makes the book work. It makes all users equal, and it has its own rules that you don’t really know until after a while.
And then I’m sure that SEPTA (my local public transit) is using its underground to call forth the dreaded Schuylkill River Monster!
Go ahead, laugh at me, but when Philly is taken over by the hideous monster, flooding the tunnels, ringing the Liberty and making me head of the library system, we’ll see whose laughing at whom then, won’t we? Especially when we take over the cheese steak market!
Seriously, no Philly Cheese steak is authentic unless you got it in Philly.
Seriously, though, the Underground and mood are the stars of the novel. It is curiosity and familiarity that compels the reader to finish the book. Not Rendell’s best work, but not bed.
You get the idea
King Solomon’s Carpet is book where the subway system plays an important part. In fact, it’s the central character. Don’t let the blurb on the back cover fool into thinking otherwise. The star of the show is neither Alice nor her lovers. It’s not Tina and the kids. It’s not Jarvis.
It’s the UNDERGROUND!
It’s the threatening nature of the Underground, any underground really, that makes the book work. It makes all users equal, and it has its own rules that you don’t really know until after a while.
And then I’m sure that SEPTA (my local public transit) is using its underground to call forth the dreaded Schuylkill River Monster!
Go ahead, laugh at me, but when Philly is taken over by the hideous monster, flooding the tunnels, ringing the Liberty and making me head of the library system, we’ll see whose laughing at whom then, won’t we? Especially when we take over the cheese steak market!
Seriously, no Philly Cheese steak is authentic unless you got it in Philly.
Seriously, though, the Underground and mood are the stars of the novel. It is curiosity and familiarity that compels the reader to finish the book. Not Rendell’s best work, but not bed.
December 9, 2020
Várias personagens, ligadas entre si e ao metropolitano de Londres, cujas histórias são sabiamente tecidas pela mestra Ruth Rendell.
August 2, 2015
When I first started reading this book I was interested, then I lost my interest but kept reading and then BOOM, I was hooked. A very unusual story with a cast of misfit characters living in an old schoolhouse where the owner Jarvis, rents out rooms to people in need.
The school is situated on a rail line(s) and the school house shakes when the trains roll by. Jarvis is obsessed with the London Transportation System, aka the subway or 'tube' system. He is so obsessed that he is writing the history of the London Underground and has travelled the world to ride on other subway systems. So the novel is filled with facts about the building of the London underground, which was a herculean effort and engineering marvel. And is a truly fascinating history in my mind.
The 'underground' is essentially a character in the story, the underground figures prominently in all the characters lives within the novel.
Jed lives with his beloved hawk Abelard in the headmaster's study. Jed volunteers with a group of concerned citizens who ride the subways to keep them safe for travellers.
There is Tom, living in classroom 5, a promising young musician, close to getting his degree when he is injured in a motorcycle accident and undergoes a personality shift due to an undiagnosed head injury. Tom busks in the tube stations, with an assortment of musicians, they are quite good, but are constantly being moved on, and don't make a living wage.
There is Tina and her two children Jasper and Bienvida and there is Tina's mother Cecilia. Cecilia doesn't live in the schoolhouse, she lives nearby and it was her brother who was the original owner of the schoolhouse when it was an actual girls school, and who later hung himself with the bell rope, and the bell subsequently tolled his death. The bell has not rung since that time decades earlier.
Tina's ten year old son Jasper spends his days in the subway trains with a small gang of boys instead of going to school. Eventually he becomes a subway roof surfer. There is no standing up on the London underground, he must lay flat out on the slippery roof of the train and find a way to hold on as the train zooms through the thick darkness of the tunnels.
There is beautiful Alice, a young woman who wants to be a concert violinist and has a tragic back story which I won't reveal as I think it's a spoiler. She moves into a classroom in the school.
And we meet a man and a man in a bear costume who are fixtures in the underground. Cecilia meets them on the train and they frighten her, and Jasper meets them in an unexpected way in a tube station.
Events start to move quickly and a mystery and a love affair build. And all of a sudden the reader is totally caught up in what is going to happen next.
This book is quite an accomplishment when I think back on it. All the characters are well drawn, and there are numerous plots running concurrently involving different characters. We are given a view of life through the elderly Cecilia's eyes, through ten year old Jaspers and youngish adults Alice, Tom and Tina. All the stories become interwoven in fascinating ways. Barbara Vine, aka Ruth Rendell is a terrific writer and while this novel had its bumps in the beginning, it was well worth the time to read. I thoroughly enjoyed it and was very surprised at the ending, which was satisfying.
The school is situated on a rail line(s) and the school house shakes when the trains roll by. Jarvis is obsessed with the London Transportation System, aka the subway or 'tube' system. He is so obsessed that he is writing the history of the London Underground and has travelled the world to ride on other subway systems. So the novel is filled with facts about the building of the London underground, which was a herculean effort and engineering marvel. And is a truly fascinating history in my mind.
The 'underground' is essentially a character in the story, the underground figures prominently in all the characters lives within the novel.
Jed lives with his beloved hawk Abelard in the headmaster's study. Jed volunteers with a group of concerned citizens who ride the subways to keep them safe for travellers.
There is Tom, living in classroom 5, a promising young musician, close to getting his degree when he is injured in a motorcycle accident and undergoes a personality shift due to an undiagnosed head injury. Tom busks in the tube stations, with an assortment of musicians, they are quite good, but are constantly being moved on, and don't make a living wage.
There is Tina and her two children Jasper and Bienvida and there is Tina's mother Cecilia. Cecilia doesn't live in the schoolhouse, she lives nearby and it was her brother who was the original owner of the schoolhouse when it was an actual girls school, and who later hung himself with the bell rope, and the bell subsequently tolled his death. The bell has not rung since that time decades earlier.
Tina's ten year old son Jasper spends his days in the subway trains with a small gang of boys instead of going to school. Eventually he becomes a subway roof surfer. There is no standing up on the London underground, he must lay flat out on the slippery roof of the train and find a way to hold on as the train zooms through the thick darkness of the tunnels.
There is beautiful Alice, a young woman who wants to be a concert violinist and has a tragic back story which I won't reveal as I think it's a spoiler. She moves into a classroom in the school.
And we meet a man and a man in a bear costume who are fixtures in the underground. Cecilia meets them on the train and they frighten her, and Jasper meets them in an unexpected way in a tube station.
Events start to move quickly and a mystery and a love affair build. And all of a sudden the reader is totally caught up in what is going to happen next.
This book is quite an accomplishment when I think back on it. All the characters are well drawn, and there are numerous plots running concurrently involving different characters. We are given a view of life through the elderly Cecilia's eyes, through ten year old Jaspers and youngish adults Alice, Tom and Tina. All the stories become interwoven in fascinating ways. Barbara Vine, aka Ruth Rendell is a terrific writer and while this novel had its bumps in the beginning, it was well worth the time to read. I thoroughly enjoyed it and was very surprised at the ending, which was satisfying.
March 2, 2014
I loved the fact that some history of the London Underground is interspersed with the plot in this novel - I don't know why, because I don't live in London, but I've always found stories about the tube's background fascinating. The novel has several characters all somehow connected with an old school house converted into an eccentric boarding house. For me the best and easily the most affecting story was that of Cecilia and her best friend Daphne - I would have been happy to read that on its own.
November 30, 2022
Cockfosters is the BEST NAME EVER for the end of the line, right? Jarvis is infatuated with London Underground: hidden tunnels, the dangers, and sledging (riding on top of subways, sometimes with only 9-inch clearances.) Tom and his busker friends illegally play music for tips beneath the surface of London. (Did the Beatles ever do this? Perhaps Herman's Hermits?) A creepy old school houses most of these restless characters. The opening chapter hints at a murder mystery. An explosive final chapter ties up a few story lines. That's 23 pages. The other 333? If not for Jarvis' musings on the tunnels and other atmospheric touches, not much happens. 100 or so fewer pages might have improved this read: I kept setting it aside for about two weeks. But I did like the song selections. And the dancing bear cause you gotta have a bear with flute concertos. PS: What's 'Cockfosters' anyway.
Cast - 3 stars. Atmosphere -4. Crime - 3. Investigation - 0 (there is none). Resolution - 2. Summary - 2.4 stars.
Cast - 3 stars. Atmosphere -4. Crime - 3. Investigation - 0 (there is none). Resolution - 2. Summary - 2.4 stars.
October 11, 2025
O kadar bunaldığım bir dönem ki ancak iyi bir polisiye beni kendime getirebilirdi. Eskilerden Ruth Rendell’ın müstear isimle yazdığı bu kitabın peşine düştüm ve bir sahafta buldum. Londra metrosunun da başrolde olduğu kitapta kendisine miras kalan çok eski bir evin odalarını kiraya veren Jarvis ve kiracıları üzerinden nefis bir hikaye anlatılıyor. Suç/gerilim sevenleri ziyadesiyle memnun ediyor.
January 30, 2016
This book takes the reader on a weird, meandering nightmare of a journey through the eyes of a group of misfits living in a decrepit former school house in North London. Far creepier than the characters in A Fatal Inversion, here Vine gives us a loner who smells of rotting meat due to the hawk he dotes on, a violinist who has abandoned her husband and baby daughter, a narcissistic musician potentially brain damaged following a road accident, and the sinister Axel Jonas, who travels the tube leading a disfigured companion dressed as a bear, terrorising commuters. The common thread between them is Jarvis, the owner of the house, who is obsessed with and writing a book about the London Underground, excerpts of which are included in the novel. And that's it really. There's no plot to speak of. There is a dramatic denouement, but it took me two thirds of the book to figure out the connections that lead to it. Still, I enjoyed the characters and Vine's beautiful prose. It's a mystery to me that she was considered a genre writer - this book particularly (along with a Fatal Inversion) seem to me to be literary fiction which just happen to include elements of suspense.
February 6, 2012
Shame on me, but I've never read either Ruth or her alter ego Barbara. Crime fiction, RR's usual genre, doesn't get me excited at all. But a friend recommended this... and I'm so glad she did.
First of all, it's steeped in the mysteries of the Underground - I'm a real London Tube freak. Second, the lady has earned her golden daggers and whatnot. Interesting, conflicted characters who get their hooks into you and you want to get back to. Terrific descriptive passages - either of the minutae of a personally significant but seemingly trivial act, or heart-stopping action sequences. And nothing is as it seems - in a very good way.
Strangely, it doesn't start too well. There's a lot of time spent on a character who isn't relevant, even in hindsight and allowing that the author might be aiming for thematic resonance. Then there's an enormous back-story dump I'm not convinced we need either. But persevere, for once the story gets going, it's terrific.
Bravo, BarbaraRuth, this book's a keeper.
First of all, it's steeped in the mysteries of the Underground - I'm a real London Tube freak. Second, the lady has earned her golden daggers and whatnot. Interesting, conflicted characters who get their hooks into you and you want to get back to. Terrific descriptive passages - either of the minutae of a personally significant but seemingly trivial act, or heart-stopping action sequences. And nothing is as it seems - in a very good way.
Strangely, it doesn't start too well. There's a lot of time spent on a character who isn't relevant, even in hindsight and allowing that the author might be aiming for thematic resonance. Then there's an enormous back-story dump I'm not convinced we need either. But persevere, for once the story gets going, it's terrific.
Bravo, BarbaraRuth, this book's a keeper.
August 4, 2019
This is probably the fifth or sixth time I've read this novel, and as I age I definitely find myself getting more out of it. This read through I was struck by the sheer craftsmanship that went into making the elegant structure of the book. With a greater understanding of adult relationships than I had as a teenager, I saw that between Tom and Alice as far more unbalanced from the start than I had done before. For me, one of the best things about the novel is the relationship between Cecilia and Daphne.
Oddly, I found the ending of the novel slightly disappointing on this read, only because consigning Alice to a psychiatric hospital at the end seems to me now like a rather lazy and old-fashioned fate for her. Everything else was perfect.
Oddly, I found the ending of the novel slightly disappointing on this read, only because consigning Alice to a psychiatric hospital at the end seems to me now like a rather lazy and old-fashioned fate for her. Everything else was perfect.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 1, 2010
Ruth Rendell, writing as Barbara Vine, certainly fills her books with strange, dark, and twisted people!!! This story deals with the London Underground (the Tube) and the various obsessions that the characters have with it. The focus of the story revolves around a group of disparate young people who reside in an old school with a tragic past and their relationships with each other and the Underground. You are never sure where the story is going but it wraps up most of the questions in the last two chapters. This may not be one of the best of the Vine books but it holds your interest and illustrates the dark side of modern London.
September 29, 2011
Ehh...not nearly so good as Barbara Vine's other stuff I've read. As you readers might know, VIne is the name that Ruth Rendell sometimes uses. I much prefer A DARK-ADAPTED EYE which was the very first time I "met" Ms. Vine/Ms. Rendell. My favorite Ruth Rendell remains A JUDGEMENT [sic] IN STONE, a crime novel about illiteracy. I love it!
January 2, 2019
I’m not sure whether this is a bad book, or I simply wasn’t in the mood - hence a non-committal three stars. Either way, after 50-odd pages of what felt to me like excruciatingly laboured exposition of a cast of characters in whom I couldn’t summon an iota of interest, I decided to jack it in. Life is too short.
March 24, 2023
Another Vine masterpiece crime mystery novel, this time the setting is the London Underground. What a brilliant idea!
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September 21, 2024I found it difficult to really sympathize with anybody in this novel. Everyone seemed to me very immature and silly. The eight year-old and the ten-year-old could be relatively easily forgiven for that--although I hated the general group of boys with which the ten-year-old hung out, already learning all the worst of male posturing--but even the adults seemed to make a lot of bad decisions, be untrustworthy, manipulative, pushy liars. The conclusion is to a certain extent satisfying while, at the same time not, strictly speaking, being a happy ending.
July 10, 2016
Another excellent book from Barbara Vine, with many of her signature elements that I listed in my review of 'House of Stairs' namely an unusual household arrangement of quirky characters, and a sense of foreboding throughout. This one also has the unique concept of the main 'character' not being a person, but the London Underground. As chance would have it, although I rarely have cause to visit London, while I was reading this book I needed to spend a day there, using the Tube, and it certainly made the book come alive even more! It even prompted me to step inside the London Transport Museum Shop and look at some books on the history of the Underground ...almost expecting to see a title by Jarvis!
My only problem with this book was that there seemed to be insufficient background on what motivated the terrorist element in this tale - it was set during the era of the IRA activity, yet it was made clear that these people were not acting on behalf of the IRA, so I wanted to know what sort of cause or dogma prompted their activities - maybe it was mentioned and I missed it. Of course since the 7/7 bombings, this tale does seem a little dated, but as a product of its time its a great read.
My only problem with this book was that there seemed to be insufficient background on what motivated the terrorist element in this tale - it was set during the era of the IRA activity, yet it was made clear that these people were not acting on behalf of the IRA, so I wanted to know what sort of cause or dogma prompted their activities - maybe it was mentioned and I missed it. Of course since the 7/7 bombings, this tale does seem a little dated, but as a product of its time its a great read.
December 5, 2019
Well, this is my third Rendell book in a row and I must say I'm beginning to see a pattern. Put a cast of characters with competing and intertwining interests together under one roof and see what happens (hint: someone dies). Cozy concept but this one was not as cozy some of the others I've read. Downright grim, or as others have noted here, gothic. That's OK by me: I like 'em dark but this title written under Rendell's Vine nom de plume, wasn't as tight as her other mystery/suspense yarns. Mind you, it's still great writing with fantastic psychological insights and all that. Just some of the characters and set-ups seemed a bit reminiscent of things I've read in the author's other works. Also, a few of the storylines didn't pan out as much as I would have expected and some seemed to enter the novel rather late (the snatcher who took Cecelia's purse I'm thinking about, unless he was the guy in the prologue). But all in all, it is a book worth reading. 3.5 stars
September 29, 2013
Listened to this on audio as part of my project to read through all of Ruth Rendell's books written as Barbara Vine. Her writing is superb, her characters skillfully drawn. Her plots typically involve a big cast of characters, some sympathetic, some less so. The sense of place is always strong-- in this case it was a London house and the whole London Underground. There is always something sinister going on but it takes a while to figure out exactly what that is. Why aren't there more of them on Audible??
August 1, 2011
The blurb on the back of this book stated that 'towards the end the tension is almost suffocating'. Absolutely true - I was experiencing considerable tension as I wondered if I had spent £7.99 on a book in which nothing was actually going to happen. So much time was spent creating 'atmosphere' that the plot was all but forgotten. A bit too arty and up-its-own-backside for my liking.
March 29, 2018
When I started the book I didn't think I would like it. But as usual, Ruth Rendell draws me in with her intricate studies of people which in the end made me very glad I read the book. I did find the profusion of men whose names all started with J confusing.
April 16, 2013
Superb - no one can convey an intense feeling of dread or portray broken people like Rendell.
February 2, 2015
The last 50 pages or so were quite compelling, but it took so damn long to get there.
April 20, 2015
Not Vine/Rendell's best effort. The story was dragged out, too many characters, many that had no connection to the core storyline and a weak plot.
November 16, 2021
Not the best Barbara Vine. I couldn’t really care less about the characters BUT the real star was the Underground and the fascinating info about it.
April 9, 2022
Too many characters. Too disjointed.
June 12, 2024
We don't often get stories about the artists who never "make it", they who practice and sacrifice but still find their ambitions frustrated and their praises growing more faint or backhanded by the year. Here we follow Alice, in the throes of post-partum depression, abandoning her husband and child to pursue dreams of musical prestige. Instead she falls in with a group of buskers playing classical music for commuters in "the tube". (The plight of these commuters reminds me of Quentin Crisp's response when he was asked what one thing he would most like to change about the world: "the music".) Soon Alice has moved in to the commune where the buskers fulfill la vie bohéme along with assorted other characters acquainted from the underground.
Meanwhile there's a lot about the subways (the world's oldest, we learn) and their history in this unusual novel, presented as fragments from an obsessed character's history of the London Underground. I found them really interesting and surprisingly quite effective as a means to build suspense by anticipating turns in the story, especially as they grow slowly darker and more chilling. But the real focus here is on mothers and children betraying their mutual trust. Like Alice, Cecilia is so imprisoned by her parents' strict decrees that she is too paralyzed to realize the source of her own happiness, or to recognize the difference between depravity and diversity in that of others. Both women experience this paralysis which produces destruction to those around them. Particularly to those around them in the subways!!
But it's not just Alice and Cecilia. Daphne's strict upbringing -like Cecilia's- has rendered her blind to her son's plight (unnamed but obviously implied to be HIV). Meanwhile Tom's grandmother encourages Tom to pursue music seriously, but finds he is only interested in her money. There's Tina who survives on child support fraud but takes zero notice of what happens to the young children she is raising in the commune. We don't know the name of Nicholas' sister but we do know she is fertile: "It was the first time she had ever had sex without using a contraceptive and she conceived at once."
What connects the unpleasant side of the London Underground with frustrated artists, bizarre terrorist schemes, and bad parents? Maybe like most of us commuters they are all making it up as they go? That's my best guess of what the Baroness is up to with combining these elements. I only hope to find some more clues in Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent". Rendell includes several explicit allusions to that book so maybe I'll read it and see what Conrad has to say about subterranean transport, frustrated artists, communal settings, family sagas and terror plots. Ten years after Rendell gave us this gripping, odd KING SOLOMON'S CARPET she was writing suspenseful, funny stories that focus on some similar themes amd settings, but I don't remember any of them being as relentlessly bleak as this strange, emotionally charged book.
"If she saw no future, only the edge of the precipice in front of her, had no conception of what to do next, how even to fill an hour, perhaps it was because there was nothing to come, that she had been led here for this moment, this finality."
Meanwhile there's a lot about the subways (the world's oldest, we learn) and their history in this unusual novel, presented as fragments from an obsessed character's history of the London Underground. I found them really interesting and surprisingly quite effective as a means to build suspense by anticipating turns in the story, especially as they grow slowly darker and more chilling. But the real focus here is on mothers and children betraying their mutual trust. Like Alice, Cecilia is so imprisoned by her parents' strict decrees that she is too paralyzed to realize the source of her own happiness, or to recognize the difference between depravity and diversity in that of others. Both women experience this paralysis which produces destruction to those around them. Particularly to those around them in the subways!!
But it's not just Alice and Cecilia. Daphne's strict upbringing -like Cecilia's- has rendered her blind to her son's plight (unnamed but obviously implied to be HIV). Meanwhile Tom's grandmother encourages Tom to pursue music seriously, but finds he is only interested in her money. There's Tina who survives on child support fraud but takes zero notice of what happens to the young children she is raising in the commune. We don't know the name of Nicholas' sister but we do know she is fertile: "It was the first time she had ever had sex without using a contraceptive and she conceived at once."
What connects the unpleasant side of the London Underground with frustrated artists, bizarre terrorist schemes, and bad parents? Maybe like most of us commuters they are all making it up as they go? That's my best guess of what the Baroness is up to with combining these elements. I only hope to find some more clues in Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent". Rendell includes several explicit allusions to that book so maybe I'll read it and see what Conrad has to say about subterranean transport, frustrated artists, communal settings, family sagas and terror plots. Ten years after Rendell gave us this gripping, odd KING SOLOMON'S CARPET she was writing suspenseful, funny stories that focus on some similar themes amd settings, but I don't remember any of them being as relentlessly bleak as this strange, emotionally charged book.
"If she saw no future, only the edge of the precipice in front of her, had no conception of what to do next, how even to fill an hour, perhaps it was because there was nothing to come, that she had been led here for this moment, this finality."
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